Chapter Text
Somewhere, far enough from nearby cities and villages, there stood a temple, beautiful in all its former glory, but the neglect was starting to show on the outside.
There were cracks in the stone and overgrown vegetation. The god to whom it was dedicated was nothing but an omen for unfortunate luck these days.
The fall of Xianle was still etched into recent memory, the pain of the catastrophic events having yet to fade.
An incurable disease, a civil war, a monster, and a failure of a god.
All these factors are what brought the previously radiant kingdom to its knees. What forced such a violent capitulation, such pain, such suffering, such pointless death?
And there was, of course—as there is in any great tragedy—one that was blamed above the rest, a scapegoat if you may. People needed to cast their stones, after all. Who cares if they were also not without sin? Such details are irrelevant. Public anger needs an outlet, and the outlet was the former crown prince of Xianle himself.
The crown prince, who pleased the gods.
The flower-crowned martial god.
Xie Lian.
An excuse for a god and a disgrace of a prince. A being barely human anymore, deserving of scorn, hatred, and pain.
What did he do? He stole!
What did he bring? A plague!
Said crown prince was currently, along with his family, a wanted fugitive. After all, the old royal family must be killed in order for the Yong’an to prove once and for all their dominance and superiority.
But the crown prince was not with his family at the moment. He was in the temple, bound upon his own altar—not that different from how offerings are placed. But instead of being the receiver, he himself was the offering. With the white-clothed monster standing behind him with its ominous mask, and in front, tens of mortals all infected with the same horrid disease that had eradicated Xianle.
Human-face disease, that is.
The hysteria had already begun setting in that dilapidated temple.
The figure in white uttered words that were spoken as a solution but were in fact a condemnation. The words: "Who should you kill? You still don’t know after seeing this face? Did you forget? He is a god, which means… he cannot die."
A black sword with a malevolent aura could suddenly be found in the figure's hand, penetrating the prince's abdomen and making him let out a pained scream of agony. The same sword thrown among the mortals and clattering with deafening sounds on the dust-covered marble.
The question of morality versus survival present in everyone’s mind.
Circumstance forced your hand, right?
You couldn’t be held accountable for what you did under the threat of death, right?
A god is meant to serve the people, right?
Even if the god is 21, even if you are older than him, a god is a god, and a god cannot be a child.
His pain and suffering is a small price to pay for the salvation of a hundred people.
After all… he could not die.
And so, letting go of their inhibitions, treating the former god as nothing but a means to an end, gagging him and holding him still while the sword was passed from person to person, one by one, they desecrated their god.
The one they used to pray to for blessings.
So are people: fickle.
Ritualistic cruelty in the name of the greater good, as the prince thrashed and screamed and sobbed and begged and cried. Until his vocal cords were cut, until he could no longer comprehend the world around him, the pain overwhelming, swallowing him whole, blinding his vision, engulfing his senses. The smell of blood was the only thing around, the puddle on the altar growing bigger by the second. The sword was pushed in and out seamlessly.
A well-oiled machine.
While the prince faded in and out of consciousness, pure agony being forced upon him, when he had been banished, his cursed shackle that now decorated his neck was given an additional condition: immortality. At the time, considered a mercy far bigger than what the prince deserved, given by the beloved ruler of heaven.
But now, it was what tethered the prince to his miserable and painful existence.
The figure in white watched, holding a small ghost fire tightly in one of his hands with his long elegant fingers. Impassive and unmoved at the display of brutality before him, confident in the abilities of the shackle—his own work. And so he watched as the prince's body became little more than bits of flesh, utterly destroyed, horrendous gashes all around, little to no portions of skin visible. One by one. Person by person. Hand by hand. They all took turns. The prince, alive and helpless.
But no invention is perfect, no mechanism flawless. There are always limits.
And this had been it.
A deafening sound drowned out all other noise as a golden light, so blinding, overtook the small temple. The mortals that had been surrounding the prince were thrown back by a force far beyond their comprehension, inhuman in nature. The figure in white's eyes widened behind his mask, and if anyone were to take it off right now, they would only see pure, unadulterated horror at the unforeseen complication.
The shackle had broken.
That had not been meant to happen.
For a few seconds, time seemed to have stopped entirely. The figure in white stood unmoving, as if needing a second to recalculate his actions after this unforeseen event. The mortals were strewn all throughout the temple, on the floor in various states of consciousness. The black sword had fallen at the incredible wave of power and was now laying, with dripping blood still fresh on its blade, at the foot of the altar.
The prince himself had taken a deep, painful breath when the shackle had broken, and then collapsed soon after, his wounds still open, blood still dripping, as if to break the silence.
The white-clothed monster approached the prince and picked up the sword. He couldn’t risk the mortals resuming their previous activity until he knew how the prince was faring. His eyes behind the mask were cold, but his face was pale.
This hadn’t been supposed to happen.
The prince seemed to breathe no more, and his pulse was nonexistent, no matter how much spiritual energy the monster attempted transferring. He looked down, his hands trembling just slightly before being steadied as he watched his plan go astray in the worst possible way.